Manhattan Theater Club Opens a New Home and Finds Trouble

By JESSE McKINLEY

Published: February 25, 2004

By early Friday morning most of the reviews for Regina Taylor's new drama ''Drowning Crow'' were in, and for the play's producers at the Manhattan Theater Club the news was almost unanimously bad.

''Terminally confused'' Ben Brantley wrote in The New York Times. ''Ill-conceived'' a Variety review stated. ''Gurgle, gurgle,'' a critic for The New York Post wrote. Some reviews were kinder of course, but some were worse.

''Drowning Crow'' Ms. Taylor's pop culture-infused adaptation of Chekhov's ''Seagull'' set in an African-American community, was just another disappointment for a company already suffering through a season marked by backstage strife, artistic feuds and very public cast defections. Even before ''Drowning Crow'' foundered with critics, Manhattan Theater Club had endured two high-profile flops: Richard Greenberg's ''Violet Hour'' and Neil Simon's ''Rose's Dilemma.''

The season's woes have also highlighted complaints from upset subscribers -- who have been leaving ''Drowning Crow'' in droves -- and upset artists, including Mr. Simon, who recently blamed Lynne Meadow, the company's artistic director, for the failure of his play. Ms. Meadow denied that, but she also had a strained relationship of late with the playwright Terrence McNally, a longtime collaborator with the company, though both say the tiff has diffused somewhat.

All of which has placed Ms. Meadow, in her 30th year as artistic director, and other theater officials in the uncomfortable position of trying to explain a string of bad luck just as the company should be celebrating a major accomplishment: the opening of the remodeled Biltmore Theater on West 47th Street. The move to its first Broadway theater, restored at a cost of $35 million, has heightened both the company's ambitions and its audiences' expectations.

''Things like this happen in the theater,'' Ms. Meadow said on Friday. ''We're not dealing with an assembly line producing cars. I wish there were some way to explain, but there's some times when it goes more smoothly -- God knows, there's been times when it's gone more smoothly -- and there's times when it's more difficult.'' So far there is no indication that the badly received shows have affected the bottom line of the company, which had a $12 million budget for the current season.

''We expect a modest deficit at the end of the year, but it's unrelated to the productions,'' said Barry Grove, the club's executive producer, adding that fund-raising was up by 17 percent this year.

The company had a record number of subscribers -- 22,500 -- coming into the season, making it one of the largest nonprofit theater companies in New York. But Mr. Grove conceded that ''Drowning Crow'' was not selling well outside the theater's subscriber base; it was playing to less than 60 percent of the capacity of the 650-seat Biltmore. It is scheduled to close on April 4.

But both Mr. Grove and Ms. Meadow stressed that the season was not yet complete, with three more productions on the way. They also pointed out that another production, ''Iron,'' at City Center Stage Two, received good reviews.

That said, this has been a tough stretch for an institution that as recently as 2001 had four productions or co-productions running on Broadway, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama ''Proof,'' and the commercial hit ''The Tale of the Allergist's Wife.''

The trouble began last fall, even as finishing touches were being put on the elegantly restored Biltmore, perhaps the one project this year for which the theater club has gotten raves.

Ms. Meadow chose ''The Violet Hour'' as the theater's first play at the Biltmore after deciding early in 2003 that a new play by Mr. McNally, ''Dedication,'' appropriately enough, about an abandoned theater coming back to life, was not yet ready for production. Mr. McNally was upset; angry letters followed. (Ms. Meadow says feud has since faded, and Mr. McNally said yesterday that their relationship was civil.)

But over the span of several weeks in late September and October, the cast of Mr. Greenberg's play, a melancholy comedy about a turn-of-the-20th-century publisher, lost both its leading women. Laura Bananti, playing the ingénue, left the show early in rehearsals for unspecified creative differences, usually a polite way of saying ''it wasn't working out.' Jasmine Guy, playing a bluesy heroin addict, left after appearing disoriented onstage during the first act of a preview performance. She was replaced at intermission and never returned. (She later blamed the incident on a medical condition.)

Both actresses were replaced by less well-known performers, and ''The Violet Hour'' opened as scheduled on Nov. 6 to middling reviews.

In early December Mary Tyler Moore, the bankable star of Mr. Simon's ''Rose's Dilemma,'' at the theater's City Center Stage One, left the play during previews after taking umbrage at criticism on her performance given by Mr. Simon. Ms. Tyler was replaced by her understudy, Patricia Hodges, and the play opened as planned, to poor reviews.

Correction: February 26, 2004, Thursday An article yesterday about the Manhattan Theater Club's troubled season misspelled the surname of an actress who dropped out of the company's production of ''The Violet Hour'' during rehearsals. She is Laura Benanti, not Bananti.